There will not be any political decisions to postpone or cancel the reform of the healthcare system, Head of the National Health Service of Ukraine Oleh Petrenko has said.
“There can be political decisions, but we hope that there will be no postponement. Alas, this is a classic Ukrainian scenario: if there is no deadline, then no one is in a hurry,” he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
According to Petrenko, the absence in the regulatory framework of clear implementation deadlines significantly slows down the process of changes that the health care system needs.
“Due to the lack of deadlines, many initiatives are not actively implemented, which is the case with the law on autonomization. Its early versions provided for a clear time frame for implementation, but now it is formulated in such a way that there is no definite deadline, only encouragement in the form of a grace period in order to move from the status of a budgetary institution into that of a non-profit enterprise,” he said, adding that in 2019 the grace period for the autonomization of the clinics is coming to an end.
Petrenko recalled that the reform of the healthcare system provides, in particular, “the stage of deployment.”
“Transitional provisions clearly provide for changes in the primary sector in 2018, in secondary and tertiary sectors in 2019. Starting from 2020, there will be only the program of medical guarantees, there will not be other financing mechanisms,” he said.
On October 19, 2017, the Verkhovna Rada supported at second reading and as a whole a draft law on state financing guarantees for providing medical services and medicines (No. 6327). The bill kicks off medical reform, in part by changing the system of financing health services.
